1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a computer that performs search operations using a web browser, and more particularly, to the statistical processing that improves search operations over time.
2. Related Art
Current search engines typically do only the searching of the web pages during their operation from a network browser running on a client device. They receive search string entered by the user and retrieve the search result list of web pages containing the search string. They display the search results as a series of subsets of a search list, in an order on the client device, based on certain criteria. General criteria that is used during a search operation is whether the search string appears fully or partly on a given webpage, the number of times the search string appears in the search result, alphabetical order, etc. These subsets of search results are moved through and viewed through the use of “Next” or “Previous” button operations that are enabled in the search engine window. Further, the user can decide to open a link by clicking on the mouse button to open and browse. The subsequent browse operation is not monitored by any entity or module built either into the network browser or the search engine.
The search result pages contain only their contents and no metadata. This minimum set of data will not help in any way to enhance the quality of the search operation. The quality of the search operation relates to the relevance of the search list from the viewpoint of user's interest, the way the results are ordered and displayed, the response of the web servers upon a page request, the quality of the web pages hosted on a web server, etc. A better search service requires certain efficient criterion for their constant monitor, one way of measuring them, and a method of using this data to improve searches. Such processing does not exist in the art today.
Search engines opened in a network browser, are not capable of sensing, user's interactions. The user's interaction parameters (or events) become one of the components of vital information required by the search engine for enhancing the quality of the search results and hence the search service. Current search engines lack the essential content/interaction/features of intelligence or sensing, and lack a monitoring module built into them for quantifying the user's interaction events with search results.
Further, current search engines, do not gather and maintain any information or statistics regarding the browsed web pages from either the client device on which the webpage is opened or the web servers hosting them. Current search engines do not have any special modules built into them, which can assist them in doing these operations. The search engine database is merely passively provide the search result list, based on the search string provided by users from the respective client terminals, without any additional gathered statistics or monitoring.
When there is no means of measuring or monitoring the search efficiency of a search session, it becomes impossible to compute any statistics related to the search efficiency that can later be used to improve search result quality. Thus, it is impossible to improve the overall performance of the Internet in terms of the search throughput, quality of searchable content, and/or the speed of searches. As a result web server quality in terms of its hosted pages, speed of response, etc., cannot be enhanced, as proper statistics are not collected, used, or computed.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the embodiments taught herein.